Email marketing expenditure set to rise

EMAIL MARKETING

Modern technology means there are various ways for companies to approach their marketing strategy.

Thanks to the internet, organisations can now reach higher numbers of consumers around the world, opening up more data capture opportunities that could lead to more profits and success.

However, customers can be tough to cater for, as different audiences will be attracted to specific promotional strategies.

For example, marketers wanting to attract young people may wish to use social media and flashy advertisements to reach out to them, while older Britons may be harder to please.

One channel that appears to be on the rise is email marketing, with a study by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) discovering that over half of the business-to-business and business-to-consumer brand marketers surveyed are confident their email marketing spend will rise this year.

According to the research, email delivered an average ROI of £21.48 for every £1 spend, while more than half of brands recorded an increase in open, click and conversion rates in 2012 from the previous year.

On the other hand, the value of generic "one size fits all" campaigns continued to fall, as 75 per cent of email revenue is now derived from more targeted approaches, while trigger email campaigns led to 21 per cent of email revenue.

Furthermore, nine in ten respondents claimed that email is "important" or "very important" to their organisation, though some expressed worries that the channel's contribution to their company's bottom lines is not gaining due recognition among senior colleagues.

Dela Quist, Chair of the DMA Email Marketing Council’s Email Benchmarking Hub and Chief Executive at Alchemy Worx, said: "The report characterises 2012 as the year where email has defied market trends and carried the load in terms of delivering revenue.

"This is equally true for our clients, who closed 2012 up on budgets and targets for email but down in other channels. The result of these successes, as the report reveals, is that marketers will be investing even more effort in email in 2013."

Experian Ltd is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Experian Ltd is registered in England and Wales under company registration number 653331.Registered office address: The Sir John Peace Building, Experian Way, NG2 Business Park, Nottingham NG80 1ZZ.